Under the Tuscan Stars

Florence was beautiful as mentioned below, but leaving there did not mean our adventure was over for the day. We hopped on a train and headed on down into central Tuscany, to Certolda where Alice grew up. We met up with Pietro (her father) at the station. We should mention here that we have previously met Pietro (in NZ) and he speaks only a little English. He stayed a night with us in May and his parting words were "next it's your turn".
That's how it proved as we drove out to his home to a wonderful meal prepared by Alice's grandmother. This was true Tuscan living with wonderful food, great drink and despite an obvious language barrier some of the best company you could ask for.
Actually the language barrier was not the problem we had anticipated. Firstly we had Alice and Alberto there to help us with any translation, and secondly they had been teaching us some must have sentences in Italian. Grandma's eyes almost popped out of her head when in mumbled Italian I said she had a beautiful home. I was a little worried that Alberto had told me how to say something totally offensive but he later assured us that Grandma was either amazed that I'd spoken in Italian or was confussed by the fact she understood English.
The night was culminated with more food and more drink, including Joseph's first alcoholic experience. What better initiation than Vino Rossi in Tuscany. Well, Joseph may argue there are better because he didn't really enjoy it and we were pleased to tell him all alcohol tastes as bad and he agreed it's not worth trying again ( sadly, this vow to be teetotal lasted one night).
The next day was spent exploring more of Tuscany as Prue had a meeting at the AFS national office. No central city building here, this is found in an abandoned monastary in the Tuscan hills.
This pretty much brought a close to our first Italian experience ( we hope to have another) as it was back to Bolonga and then onto the plane the next day. We can't thank Alberto, Alice and their families enough for their hospitality. It truely was one of the highlights of our lives and it was made so much more special by sharing it with such good friends. The food we ate was beyond beautiful and between, Alice, Alberto's Mum, Alice's Grandmother and pizza stands which are just everywhere we sampled the best Italy has to offer.
As for the language two weeks on and we can still recall our few useful sayings

Chau

I would also like to add that we have not done Italy justice, it was an amazing trip and a huge experience - we will be adding in more as we want to add in information and more trips we did during this week.